ABOUT HAUFE GROUP
Haufe Group, with its brands Haufe, Haufe Akademie and Lexware, is Germany‘s leading media and software vendor for specialist information and portals, (cloud computing) applications, e-procurement, online communities, specialised software, as well as staff and organisational development: the company offers its customers up-to-date, professionally prepared information as well as integrated workplace and overall solutions in order to successfully organise fiscal, economic and legal tasks.
Headquartered in Freiburg, Germany, Haufe Group currently employs around 1950 people at 20 locations in Germany and abroad, most recently generating sales of more than 366 million euros – and continues to pursue an international growth strategy.
THE TASK
Haufe Group is expanding - in terms of both staff and construction: for the planned growth, the company needs space for new workplaces. Therefore, the company erected a new headquarter building in early 2018 - and in this context, commissioned DEKOM with the planning and implementation of a fully integrated boardroom around a custom-made, 5 sqm Full HD LED wall as its core. Since Haufe Group, as a recognized innovator in its industry, has been using professional video conferencing hardware on a daily basis for quite some time, it was thereby important to integrate the existing technology and established application routines into the new room concept.
CUSTOM LED
Central element of the new 90 sqm, 23-seat boardroom is a 5 sqm LED wall, custom-made by DEKOM: seamlessly assembled from 25 individual modules, it offers a total of 3000 x 1687.50 mm high-resolution display area for presentations, video conferences and various applications in Full HD.
In contrast to pre-configured LED panels, only DEKOM’s in-house production made it possible to precisely match the dimensions and specifications to concrete spatial requirements such as viewing distance, solar radiation, etc.; and to the complementary built-in technology. Additional benefit: employees at Haufe Group can diagnose potential malfunctions, and have the entire system remotely maintained by DEKOM via a Remote Access Appliance.
The equally custom-made panel housing also integrates two powerful 400W Fohhn line array speakers, subwoofers and bass amplifiers that, combined with six Bose FreeSpace loudspeakers distributed throughout the room, provide powerful sound; as well as the existing cameras. The latter, combined with intelligent Shure microphone arrays discreetly embedded in the ceiling, now also provide active speaker tracking: during videoconferences or recordings, the position of the person speaking is automatically recognized and focused within the room.
All installed components including the display, lighting, codec, signal receiver, audio server, the wireless ClickShare presentation system and many more, were networked via a Crestron DigitalMedia matrix switcher to form a central infrastructure.The system not only controls the signal distribution from the desk connection panels and floor tanks to switch presentation PCs, notebooks, cameras or other sources to the LED panel and speakers, but also has an integrated media control: the entire technology can now intuitively and conveniently be controlled via a 10“, fully glazed touch panel placed in the entrance area.
NEVER CHANGE A WINNING TEAM
At the request of Haufe Group, in order not to impair the proven usability i.e. the already familiar and successfully established use of the Cisco videoconferencing hardware, the DEKOM developers managed to transfer the Cisco user interface both functionally and graphically to the new media control: the systems can be operated exactly as before, a familiarization is not necessary.
"State-of-the-art videoconferencing and media technology; appealing, representative design and flexible applications intuitively operable to focus on Haufe Group’s people and content: that was our expectation towards the boardroom, which was accepted and fulfilled by DEKOM."
(Thomas Biechele, Technical Manager Business Technology Services - ICT Workplace, Haufe Group)
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